“So have I become your enemy by telling you the truth?” — Gal. 4:16

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Just Wondering About Sandra Fluke

The media, liberal and conservative, seemed to erupt last week after Rush Limbaugh made some disparaging remarks about Sandra Fluke. Ms. Fluke is a third year laws student at the Catholic Institution, Georgetown University Law Center. For those who may have missed the ruckus, Ms. Fluke writes in “Sandra Fluke: Slurs won’t silence women” :

Last month, students from several Catholic universities gathered to send a message to the nation that contraception is basic health care. I was among them, and I was proud to share the stories of my friends at Georgetown Law who have suffered dire medical consequences because our student insurance does not cover contraception for the purpose of preventing pregnancy.

Putting aside the fact that Rush tastelessly used personal and insulting language in describing Ms Fluke, for which he has apologized several times, was Rush out of line in wondering why others should be expected to pay the cost for Ms. Fluke’s, and by extension, all women’s contraception? We don’t think so. As the media firestorm erupted this week over Rush’s comments, it was brought to everyone’s attention that David Letterman, Bill Mahr and many other liberal mouthpieces have said far worse about women on their shows with no backlash from the mainstream media or the feminists at all. Indeed, liberal apologists maintain that these men are mere entertainers, and as such, are free to say whatever they want, but Rush should be banned from the airwaves, and according to Gloria Allred, criminally prosecuted! And yet, no conservative that has been paying attention to anything for the past few decades can be surprised by this double standard. Freedom of speech today seems to mean that people are free to agree with the liberal elites.

However, our concern is not really about the right or wrong of name calling, no matter how egregious, and no matter what “side” of the political/cultural divide the insults and name calling proceeds from. The “divide” is a fact of life in America now, and it can be very vicious. Indeed, anyone who steps into the political or cultural arena today can pretty much expect to come under fire – fairly or unfairly. I think the issue is one of religious liberty.

Just to be clear, we are not Roman Catholic and so we don’t necessarily agree with all of their doctrinal positions. But in free America, Roman Catholics do have a legitimate and constitutional right to hold them. On issues of sexuality, the Roman Catholic position is clear and has been consistent in their positions for generations:

Marriage is between a man and a woman.
Sex is not to be engaged in outside of marriage. This includes fornication, adultery, same gender sex, pedophilia, etc.
Use of contraception to prevent pregnancy is sin in their view. They do approve of certain methods to avoid pregnancy within the bounds of marriage but most forms of contraception are not on that list. They do make an exception and allow birth control pills to treat cysts on ovaries. In other words, they make an exception to treat an illness and they do not regard pregnancy as an illness.
Abortion is the taking of a human life – not only highly immoral, but an act of murder.

That individual Catholics do not follow all the proscriptions and official teachings of their church changes nothing – it does not negate the church’s right to hold and proclaim them. No one of lives in complete consistency with even our own consciences, but the fact that human beings fail does not negate right and wrong – and we maintain that most people do know right from wrong. Churches cannot and should not change their doctrines to keep up with the times, or to accommodate human weakness. Churches are to hold up the moral standard, regardless of the popularity of its stand. The Ten Commandments were never put to a vote! Would adultery, coveting and lying still be in there if it had been?

We have to wonder if Sandra Flute is really equipped to be an attorney though. Our concern stems from a series of questions:

Was she aware that Georgetown University Law Center is a Roman Catholic institution?
Is she aware that the doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church prohibits sexual relations outside of marriage?
Is she aware that the doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church is opposed to contraception?

If she is ignorant of these issues, that would demonstrate a serious lack of ability to gather the necessary decision-making information that is required in the practice of law. If, on the other hand, she is well aware of these issues, then it is apparent that she deems freedom of religion under the Constitution as meaningless, in which case she is unqualified to be an attorney, since our constitutional rights are foundational to all of our laws.

Sandra Fluke has the right to believe and practice as she chooses about extramarital sex. She has the right to use contraception and already has complete “access” to it, like everyone else. She does not have the right to expect the rest of society to pay for her behavioral choices in the privacy of her bedroom, though, and she certainly has no right to deprive others of their freedom of conscience and freedom of religion

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Comments

Just Wondering About Sandra Fluke — 4 Comments

I appreciated your commentary on this issue which is being distorted by the media. This is another attempt by the whacko left to make everybody pay for their lifestyle choices and consequences and to try to force all of us to condone them. As a taxpayer, quite apart from my faith, I do not want to pay to subsidize somebody’s promiscuity, or its consequences (pregnancy, AIDS, STDs, whatever).
I have the medical issue to which she speaks, PCO, and the pill is not the best way to treat it although it is the first thing doctors think of. Weight, diet, lifestyle changes, and natural hormones all make a bigger improvement without the cancer risks the pill will cause, but the pharmaceutical industry won’t make money off the alternatives. As far as the “slur” Rush is accused of, Merriam Webster’s dictionary defines it as “a promiscuous woman.” Enough said. If the shoe fits………..

Thanks for articulating this. Especially the second to last paragraph about Fluke’s competence as a future lawyer. So many of my liberal friends are trying to use Rush’s over the line wording as a big distraction from what Fluke is doing, namely, helping the Obama administration ride roughshod over religious liberty. Actually, they are not so much concerned about the distraction as they are trying to use this as an occasion to see that Rush is driven off of radio. They do not seem to be concerned about the religious freedom aspect of this whole media stir.

In addition to the campaigns I’ve seen on my facebook feeds to “fire Rush,” I’ve also noticed this article, where the accusation is evangelicals are no longer concerned with spreading the gospel as they are now concerned with voting a certain way. Your article, Don and Joy, was a welcome relief to reading this broad brushed screed: http://rachelheldevans.com/rush-limbaugh-evangelical-blind-spots
I’m sure there are some who think more about political advantage than they do the gospel, including some in Rachel Evans’ camp. But that article was connecting dots with spray paint.

I don’t want to issue the caveat that Rush used a couple very inappropriate words in his monologue, which was wrong, and for which he apologized, but I feel I must, because I agreed with Rush’s basic argument, the term for which is reductio ad absurdum. If you take away the bad names he used, all that can be seen is some silly humor, and the very proper tactic of taking Ms. Fluke’s standards and turning them back on her. Going by the contention that it isn’t right to force a Catholic institution to violate its conscience, he took it from there. He basically said Ms. Fluke thinks it’s OK to trash religious liberty for her agenda. Then lets ask her to provide videos then. All it was was turning her standard back on her, to ask of her something that was as outrageous as her demands were. And what she was doing was the key point, as you said.

When you couple Sandra Fluke’s disregard of religious liberty with the fact that the RC church already permits medicinal use of birth control, that birth control for the sole purpose of birth control is cheap or free to the vast majority of United States citizens who cannot afford to pay for it, it was kind of like Ms. Fluke was advocating for converter boxes for the poor who can’t yet afford to buy digital TVs — that has already been taken care of, sorry Sandra Fluke. She was several days late and many dollars short in her arguments. My surmise is she was trying to rebuild the image of the Obama administration after their attempt to ride roughshod over the Catholic church, and Obama had to backtrack. The whole thing about Ms. Fluke was fake – including making her appearance look like a real congressional hearing.

I just wanted to point out something mentioned in the article…about “the rest of society” having to pay for contraception…since I’m knowledgeable in the health insurance field, I just wanted to note that NOBODY ELSE pays for someone’s contraception. NO ONE’S premiums will go up [in fact, not even the premium of the person getting the contraception goes up]. The only ones who pay for the contraception itself are the insurance company and the person getting the contraception. Yes, an employer does pay part of the premium, but like I said the premium does not go up for anybody, the employer is paying nothing extra for that coverage, so the employer will pay the same rate for a premium for someone who gets the contraception and someone who doesn’t. No change in that respect at all.

It’s a common misconception, really, considering that insurance is probably the most complicated system on this earth. But, as I work in the medical insurance field, it’s my job to know these things. The misconception probably stems from the fact that – usually – when another type of coverage is added, the premium goes up. However, in this case, it does not. Contradictory and therefore illogical, yes. Welcome to the wonderful world of health insurance. 🙂